EVE Online players raise $6000 for widow and family of fallen gamer

If you’ve played MMORPGs long enough — or played some of the older ones especially — you’ve surely met or heard about a fellow MMO player who’s passed on, leaving both his or her real-world family and digital community bereft.

One such player was EVE Online’s Jeff “BigCountry” Waltman, well-known in the EVE community as radio host for the long-running EVE-themed Open Comms Show. His passing after a multi-month illness earlier this week has generated a long Reddit thread full of salutes in his honor. In fact, EVE players have thus far raised over $6000 on GoFundMe for BigCountry’s widow and young family, far surpassing the $1500 goal.

CCP Falcon told Massively OP that the company was “shocked and saddened” at BigCountry’s passing, having just spoken to him on the program last week.

“It’s incredibly painful for our pilots and for everyone here at CCP when we hear of the passing of a member of our community. Given how close knit out player base is, this kind of tragic news tends to send substantial ripples through our community. We honestly hope these types of days never come, but with EVE nearing her 14th anniversary, it tends to be something that can’t be avoided. That said, we see an incredible show of support from our pilots when something terrible like this happens and putting the spaceships aside, it gives us a bittersweet sense of pride when we see our community band together, unified in support at difficult times like this. A perfect example of this is the gofundme that was set up as you’ve pointed out, which has surpassed 300% of its intended goal within 17 hours. It’s incredibly humbling to see our community show such incredible support for BC’s family at such a stressful and difficult time.”